Journal of Chongqing University (English Edition) [ISSN 1671-8224] Vol. 10 No. 4 December 2011 Article ID: 1671-8224(2011)04-0177-07 To cite this article: XU Yu-hui, LV Yan-ke. An evaluation system for of urban public rental housing construction in Chongqing [J]. J Chongqing Univ: Eng Ed [ISSN 1671-8224], 2011, 10(4): 177-183. An evaluation system for of urban public rental housing construction in Chongqing XU Yu-hui 1,2, LV Yan-ke 1,2, 1 Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400045, P.R. China; 2 The State Key Laboratory of New Technology for Construction of Cities in Mountain Area, Chongqing 400045, P.R. China Received 13 November 2011; received in revised form 29 November 2011 Abstract: A social problem that low-income people are unable to purchase houses in urban areas has been focused in recent years and the housing security system has also become an important part of the social security system. In recent years, public rental houses appeared as a new type of affordable houses. The national government took the construction of public rental houses to the national strategic level. Currently, there are many problems in the public rental house construction. For example, policy mechanisms are inadequate, the use of funding is not in an efficient way, the location of public rental houses is far away from the downtown, the plot ratio is too high, and facilities are incomplete. There are no appropriate indicators to comprehensively evaluate the public rental house construction. Based on the livable evaluation system in Chongqing, we selected four aspects of relevant indicators as the economic, environmental, social, and life to establish the public rental house construction evaluation system. Keywords: public rental house; evaluation system; environmental ; social ; life CLC number: TU984 Document code: A 1 Introduction a 1.1 Importance of housing security With the transition of economic structure and deepening of reform and openness, P. R. China undergoes different phases from welfare housing to house marketing, and finally to housing security phase (Fig. 1). Meanwhile, the urbanization process is speeding up in China. The house market regulation system is incomplete, however. For low-income people in cities, the house price is high, and they have no residential places because of the incomplete housing Corresponding author, LV Yan-ke ( 吕彦柯 ): lyklf0923@foxmail.com. Funded by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities Project (No. CDJZR 10190003). security system. The phenomenon gives tremendous pressure to the society, economy, environment, and urban development and management. The Habitat Agenda and the Istanbul Declaration on Human Settlements published in 1996 by the United Nations proposes governments responsibilities and obligations of providing housing for all citizens to ensure the housing rights of residents. In other words, the core task of a government is to ensure the homeownership. Therefore, the housing security issue is very hot in recent years. Local governments actively explore new models of housing security. Public rental housing is an innovative practice to improve China s urban housing security system. 1.2 Status of public rental house construction in the livable Chongqing Public rental housing is a protection promoted and implied by government for the sandwich layer people 177
in the city. [1] Chongqing public rental housing supply in housing construction is a key ring, having the characteristics of low-rent housing before and affordable housing, and it extends to the sandwich layer people who cannot have the low-rent housing or afford a commodity house. Chongqing public rental housing system integrates public rental housing, lowrent housing, and affordable housing. It effectively solves the housing problem of low-income people. As the focus of livelihood and for the realization of basic building livable goal of Chongqing, Chongqing municipal government will offer 4 10 7 m 2 public rental housing to about 2 10 6 urban low-income persons in 3 years. The construction quantity and rate increases year by year (Figs. 2 and 3). Meanwhile, the construction of public rental houses is in the first place of the Ten livelihood projects of Chongqing in 2010, which shows its important status in Chongqing. cooperate effectively with each other. 3) The mechanism of accessing and exiting is not perfect. It can not adapt to market changes and the affordable housing can not play the coordination and stability in markets. The atmosphere is not conducive to the formation of community. 4) Financing mechanism is the key factor which effects stability and durability of public rental house supply. Development of public rental houses requires availability of land and construction funds, but the cost of long-term housing maintenance is huge and takes a long cycle. Because of the characteristics of welfare, the construction management of public rental houses must adhere to the principle of protecting the low-income people. Circulation of funds for construction is very slow, and it is hard to form a virtuous circle of financial inputs and outputs. Fig. 2 Building capacity of public rental house Fig. 1 Development of China s housing system 2 Problems 2.1 Level of policy Policy objectives are not unified and relevant provisions also needs improvement. There are four aspects: 1) Due to the lack of a unified policy guidance in a national level in the management of public rental houses, [2] some specific systems are not clear and their coverage is inconsistent. 2) Public goods attribute of the public rental houses has led to a single provider. The government, market and companies do not Fig. 3 Government goal of building various housing 2.2 Level of society With the development of housing market, new living contradictions and social conflicts are increasingly prominent. As the emergence of a large number of lowincome people in cities who can not afford to buy a house and the rural population into cities in urbanization process, the gap between rich and poor is 178 J. Chongqing Univ. Eng. Ed. [ISSN 1671-8224], 2011, 10(4): 177-183
increasingly concentrated in urban areas. [3] Public rental house is a highly social security livelihood project. Because of land costing, the object of protecting, and supply constraints, the site of public rental house is often in the suburbs. Meanwhile, due to the existence of an independent way of settlements, it is easy to speed up the polarization. The public rental tenants are not entitled to urban public resources, formatting residential segregation, which cause the decline of urban function and trigger corresponding social problems. 2.3 Level of planning and construction As a residential, the public rental housing is unique. Therefore, the planning and construction at the same time meeting the features of protection should also meet the design specifications, life, and spiritual needs of rental groups. [4] At present, the construction and planning of public rental house only meet some basic living needs of residents. In the macro-level, planned land site is improper, which locates in remote areas and surrounding transportation facilities and related supports are not perfectly matching. In the meso-level, the rate of cell volume is high, 3.5 to 4.0 generally. There are mainly high-rise tower buildings, which gives a sense of spatial enclosure, poor identification, and the feeling of depression. In the micro-level, the architecture color, dimensions, and identification are single, and the family-configuration is not reasonable to meet the needs of public rental tenants. 2.4 Causes The current construction of public rental house is to meet the basic housing needs of low-income persons in some extent. It still at the exploratory stage. Relevant policies, social, and other aspects of planning and construction are not yet well established. The current study of construction of affordable housing is almost remain in the policy and economic level, which is neglected in sociological research level and planning level. Most importantly, there is no perfect evaluation system to comprehensively evaluate and summarize the construction of existing public rental housing settlements, which can not properly guide the development of public rental housing and construction. Therefore, we must introduce a evaluation system of public rental housing construction. 3 Public rental housing construction evaluation system 3.1 Construction principle 1) Goal-oriented. The indicators must be able to fully reflect the requirements and targets. The indicator system should be targeted as the center, as comprehensively as possible to reflect the essential characteristics of evaluation objects and maintain a high degree of consistency with the evaluation objects. 2) Scientific and objective. The choice of evaluation must be scientific and objective. The indicator system must be able to objectively reflect the of public rental housing construction and components of the content. It should measure the construction of public rental housing situation on a scientific basis and as concise as possible. 3) Systematic and targeted. The evaluation system should be designed with the perspective of livable Chongqing, taking public rental housing tenants satisfaction as the fundamental point to measure the construction of public rental housing and highlighting the economic, social and environmental dimensions of indicators. Meanwhile, any indicators of a unit should have a high degree of generality, which can accurately and sensitively reflect the construction of public rental housing fitness. 4) Operational principles. The selected indicators can be used to express the same time with quantity and the data source should also be noted. Data that are easy to be quantified, accessed, and compared should be chose to accomplish the calculation. 3.2 Evaluation indicators Based on reported studies on the livable cities and livable relevant evaluation index system of Chongqing, considering the residents basic needs for work and life and the idea of livable Chongqing, we took the public rental housing estate as the research level and built a three criterion-level indicator system including the system level - the target level - the structure level using AHP. In this paper, the construction of public rental housing fitness is decomposed into economic, environmental, social, and life as the target layers (Table 1). J. Chongqing Univ. Eng. Ed. [ISSN 1671-8224], 2011, 10(4): 177-183 179
System layer Assessment indicator system about urban public rental housing construction Target layer Economic Environmental Social Life Table 1 Evaluation form Rule layer Interpretation Price of land Average land transfer of area of public rental housing. Including building materials, decoration, landscaping, and roads, excluding the cost Construction costs of land in order to calculate the cost per unit area. Operation and The operation and maintenance costs per unit area in the building life cycle. maintenance costs Settlements plot ratio floor area/land area, mainly reflecting the capacity of Plot ratio residential buildings. Area rents of public rental house to the average family income, reflecting the household ability to pay for housing. The higher the ratio is, the lower capacity to pay. Calculated as: rent to income ratio total household rent price / total household Rent to income ratio income; (1) total household rent price rent per unit area area of residential housing; (2) total household income average population per household total annual income per capita. Traffic consumption per Commuting costs, to reflect the travel impact of residents of public rental house capita caused by the location of settlements. Living space per capita residential housing area/settlements in the number of Living space per capita inhabitants, mainly reflecting the settlement of public rental housing comfort. Reflects the capacity and the construction of public rental housing settlements Building density comfort, calculated as: building the base building density area/land area. Average building height Mainly reflects the settlements building capacity and building contour plot. Refers to the possession of the city district of green area per inhabitant. Green area Green area per capita per capita total area of urban green space/area resident population. Harmless treatment rate Means a safe disposal of domestic waste accounts for the total area percentage of of garbage rubbish. Calculated as: per square area total area of settlements Square/Settlements number Stadium per capita of inhabitants. number of satisfactory 80 the number of general satisfaction 60 the number with residential of general satisfaction is not satisfied with the number 40 the number of the environment more unsatisfaction 20)/survey sample size 100 Ratio of local household Demographic composition of the community and migrant number of satisfactory 80 + the number of general satisfaction 60 + the number with the neighborhood is not satisfied with the number 40 + the number of the more unsatisfaction atmosphere 20)/survey sample size 100 Traffic safety Mainly reflects the incidence of traffic accidents within the community. Mainly reflects the community to set the internal situation of disaster prevention and Disaster prevention mitigation facilities. number 80 the number of general satisfaction 60 the number of general with the services of satisfaction is not satisfied the number 40 the number of the more property unsatisfaction 20)/survey sample size 100 The average distance to Mainly reflects the residents get transportation stations (bus stops, light rail station) transport terminals the average distance, reflecting the degree of ease of travel within the district. Area of educational Reflects the area within the primary school, kindergarten per capita rate. facilities per capita Area of commercial Calculated as: per capita commercial facilities, commercial facilities construction facilities per capita area total area/number of district residents. Area of medical Refers to the per capita health facilities within the district area, to reflect the residents facilities per capita can enjoy within the cell whether the extent of medical protection standards. number 80 the number of general satisfaction 60 the number of general with community living satisfaction is not satisfied with the number 40 the number of the more facilities unsatisfaction 20)/survey sample size 100. 180 J. Chongqing Univ. Eng. Ed. [ISSN 1671-8224], 2011, 10(4): 177-183
3.3 Case study The public rental housing named Minxinjiayuan is the first public rental housing project in Chongqing. It provides 12 195 sets of low-rent houses and 5 681 units for public rental. Its range covers the Jiangbei District, the Yubei District, the North Zone and the Yuzhong District. floors in Minxinjiayuan, which led to a feeling of depression. The green indicator per capita is low, mainly caused by the construction group model. 3.3.1 Economic The project is located in the heart of new urban areas and the land price is very high. There is no combined point for the land costs and the construction of affordable housing. Therefore, the rent is high, which is close to the internationally recognized rental income ratio of 20 to 30 (Table 2). The project has no advantage compared with the existing settlements in the old city rental housing, causing various degrees of pressure to the low-income people. Due to the large amount of public rental housing construction, it is easy to recover funds. Compared to high-rise residential buildings, the floor area ratio is high. Meanwhile, because the location of public rental housing is far from the workplace of lessee, their daily transport costs are relatively high. Economic Table 2 Economic evaluation form Price of land 3 000 RMB/m 2 Construction costs 1 200 RMB/m 2 Operation and maintenance costs in the building life 150 RMB/m 2 cycle Plot ratio 4.0 Rent to income ratio 1 3 Per-capita traffic consumption 10 RMB/d 3.3.2 Environmental It can be seen from the data that 65 people are satisfied with the environment (Fig. 4). From an environmental point of view, the index analysis showed that the environment of the project is good and the resident satisfaction is high (Table 3). However, from the planning point of view, there are many high-rise residential buildings of mostly 25 to 33 Fig. 4 Satisfaction with residential environment Table 3 Environmental evaluation form Environmental 3.3.3 Social Living space per capita 17.03 m 2 Building density 30 Average building height 90 m Green area per capita 2 m 2 Harmless treatment rate of 95 garbage Stadium per capita 2.5 m 2 with 87.8 residential environment Fig. 5 shows that 56 people are satisfied with the community atmosphere and Fig. 6 shows that 60 people are satisfied with the property management. Based on the social indicators of analysis, the community atmosphere of the project is general and residents satisfaction is not high. It is mainly caused by the operation of public rental housing mechanisms. Since public rental housing system costs a long time from the application to allotment, the residents can not follow their own will to choose the right house. Social evaluation form is shown in Table 4. The ratio of outside the local household registration population to the local household registration population in the project is moderate. Therefore, it basically solved the housing problem of migrants which is conducive to social stability and development. This is related to the policy of no restriction on the household registration in Chongqing. J. Chongqing Univ. Eng. Ed. [ISSN 1671-8224], 2011, 10(4): 177-183 181
1) Enhance the level of economic The single housing and money supply model of the public rental housing should be got rid of gradually. The real estate business can be joined in to increase the amount of housing facilities and update existing settlements in order to save land resources, [5] while to improve residents trip convenience. Fig. 5 Satisfaction with community atmosphere Life Table 5 Life evaluation form Average distance to transport 300 m terminals Area of educational facilities per 3.6 m 2 capita Area of commercial facilities per 5.2 m 2 capita Area of medical facilities per capita 3.4 m 2 Resident satisfaction with 73.2 community living facilities Fig. 6 Satisfaction with property management Social Table 4 Social evaluation form The ratio of local household and migrant Resident satisfaction with the neighborhood atmosphere Traffic accident 3.3.4 Life Disaster prevention Resident satisfaction with the services of property 1.8 1.0 67.3 2.3 times/a Good 76.8 Table 5 shows that the project life is good fitted and the resident satisfaction is high. However, unsatisfied cases mainly are long waiting time in public transport and medical facilities not perfect (Fig. 7). 3.3.5 Summary According to livable standards analysis of Chongqing, the overall assessment of the construction of public rental housing named MinxinJiayuan is good. There are some problems in the construction, however, which should be noted as follows: Fig. 7 Satisfaction with living facilities The development of standards is the reference of market rents and income level. The ratio of the rent to the income is appropriate when it equals 20. Building energy conservation and waste utilization should be noted in the construction process while construction quality should be improved and life cycle maintenance costs should be reduced. 2) Enhance the level of economic Appropriately reduce the floor area ratio and building height of the public rental house to reduce people s suppressed feelings. Diversify designs to meet the needs of different people. In the process of construction, we should increase the green land ownership per capita and pay attention to green groups development. 3) Enhance the level of social Gradually simplify and improve the application and [6] exit mechanism, reduce application time. and improve the community atmosphere according to 182 J. Chongqing Univ. Eng. Ed. [ISSN 1671-8224], 2011, 10(4): 177-183
wishes of residents. The site of public rental housing should be fully considered. Hierarchical mixture of various ethnic groups live in the same site together, which is a good class integration to promote social stability and avoid the phenomenon of slum. [7] 4) Enhance the level of life Further improve the construction of settlements around public transport. Reduce the waiting time of public transport to minimize the impact of location. Strengthen community and cultural facilities and the construction of medical facilities. 4 Conclusion With the gradual improvement of housing security system, the construction of public rental housing will gradually mature and become the basic conditions of urban development. Therefore, we should use the livable Chongqing perspective to study the current construction of public rental housing evaluation system. It can be adopted to analyze the problems in the process of building by comparison of the indicators. Proposed construction of public rental housing is more conducive for development to address urban problems in low-income housing and promote further development of the city. References [1] Chongqing Government. Chongqing interim measures on management of public rental housing [Z]. Chongqing: 2010. [2] Hong ZS, Li SY. The speculation about the residential renewal [C]. In: China Urban Planning Society Annual Meeting, Xiamen, 2002. Xiamen: [s.n.], 2002: 10. [3] Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, the Real Estate Industry Research Center. Development of China s public rental housing mechanism and countermeasure research [M]. Shanghai: Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, 2009. [4] Wang SH, Ran LF. Living under the condition of differentiation strategy harmonious community planning [J]. Planners [ISSN 1006-0022], 2008(12): 53-62. [5] Xiang TT. Live differentiation theory and Shanghai supporting commodity house planning size and location research [D]. Shanghai: Tongji University, 2006. [6] Jiao YX. Exploration on the mixed building mode of public housing aiming at habitation integration [J]. Urban Studies [ISSN 1006-3862], 2007, 14(5): 57-61. (In Chinese). 焦怡雪. 促进居住融和的保障性住房混合建设方式探讨 [J]. 城市发展研究 [ISSN 1006-3862],2007,14(5):57-61. [7] Yang J, Wang DN, Zhang S. Site selection strategies of middle and low income housing [J]. City Planning Review [ISSN 1002-1329], 2009, 12: 53-58. (In Chinese). 杨靖, 汪冬宁, 张嵩. 保障性住房的选址策略研究 [J]. 城市规划 [ISSN 1002-1329],2009,12:53-58. Edited by XUE Jing-yuan J. Chongqing Univ. Eng. Ed. [ISSN 1671-8224], 2011, 10(4): 177-183 183